John Brownlee - page 176

During last night’s Super Bowl Sunday, I was surrounded by a multitude of passionates for that noble game, fans who felt every impact of muscle and cartilage as gods collided upon the field. While friends around me pumped their firsts and said, with great authority, things like: “”Expect the Packers to try to tie a bow on this baby by running out the clock in the second half,” I nodded sagely and pretended to understand the game.

My secret, of course, is that I don’t. In fact, my understanding of professional football’s rules are almost entirely gleaned from this 1944 theatrical Goofy short that I watched on my iPhone on the car ride to my friend’s house for “the Big Game.”

One thing I do know, however, is the sanctity of the playbook: that secret tome of symbolic crosses and circles ascribed strategic meaning by arrows and squiggles. It’s always seemed to me that the average playbook would make a good app.

Ignorant as I may be of the way professional football is conducted, it looks like I’m not alone, as Dallas Cowboys technology director Pete Walsh has begun to push his team to start using iPads as their playbooks.

Web developer Chris Galzerano has been digging through the latest beta of iOS 4.3, and his digital archeology has uncovered some interesting hints about what the iPad 2 will look like and what hardware it will boast.

First, iOS 4.3 seems to strongly imply that the Verizon will have its own iPad. The firmware describes iPad 2,1, iPad 2,2 and iPad 2,3, which suggests three models in WiFi, 3G GSM/UMTS and 3G CDMA flavors.

If you’re looking to play a game on your Mac about a homicidal, anthropomorphic rabbit on a quest for vengeance (and hey, who doesn’t), Lugaru HD by Wolfire Games has been the only option around since 2005. That changed a couple of weeks ago, though, when another developer started offering an identical game called Lugaru on the Mac App Store for $1.99… only a fifth of the price of the original game.

What’s happened? Well, some months back, Wolfire Games sweetened the pot of the Humble Indie Bundle (which they are also behind) by making Lugaru HD open source. They released the source under a GPL license, but as is common in these sorts of situations, they retained the rights to the game’s assets: graphics, sounds, levels, etc.

Unfortunately, it appears some less-than-scrupulous devs decided to take the source code and the assets and fling them up on the recently launched Mac App Store. Infuriatingly, they say they’re in the right.

Simplenote is my go-to note taking software on both the Mac and iOS, thanks to its titular simplicity and the nicety with which it plays with external apps like JiustNotes. Now it’s got a beefy update that adds even more functionality to the mix, including Dropbox syncing and lists.

While its only for premium customers, Simplenote’s Dropbox option allows notes to sync with your Mac’s Dropbox folder as simple text files, editable in any program that can handle a plain .txt.

Another premium option is support for lists, which allows any note to be turned into a task list that will allow you to edit the list items inline and even drag-and-drop to rearrange them. This is actually a great feature, as I tended to use my Simplenotes folder as a task list anyway: this just makes it all the easier to manage.

Unfortunately, for both of these functions, you’ll need to be a premium subscriber, which means paying the Simplenote guys $20 a year… but honestly, they deserve it.

As Apple’s App Stores become larger and larger, the difficulty of curating them and organizing apps in a browsable way becomes increasingly difficult. It also becomes increasingly difficult to allow customers to find what they want through simple search terms

To try to keep things tame, the iPad App Store has just gained some useful new filters to help you search through the store’s wares. Now when you’re looking for an app, you can assign a filter to the search thanks to the magic of popovers: Category, Release, Date, Customer Ratng, Prive and Device.

This is an iPad-only tweak for right now, and might stay that way, given the limitations of display real estate on the sub-4-inch line of iOS devices. Interestingly, though, they’re also not available on the Mac App Store. I reckon that will change, especially as the Mac App Store grows.

Another nice little change? Apps you’ve previously bought now have buttons next to them that say “Install” instead of “Buy.” Much appreciated, Apple: I was always worried I’m going to end up buying the same app twice under the old system.

[via MacStories]

You waited four years for this: four years of torment spent envying, coveting, planning, anticipating. When you first heard it could finally be yours, you could scarcely believe it, but then the frenzy set in, and you knew that there was no shortage of teeth you would shatter or life you would spill to finally get your hands on one, and god help any man who would come between, for he would not recognize the death that he faced until it was too late.

Luckily, it didn’t come to that. In actuality, all you needed to do was stay up a little past your bedtime on Wednesday and the Verizon iPhone was yours, at least in pre-order theory. Now you’re in the end zone: just a week more to wait until you can finally call an iPhone 4 your own.

You don’t have long to wait, we swear. In fact, an iPhone might already be on its way to you, as some Verizon customers are already getting shipping confirmation notes. Ever Verizon’s FAQ allows for the possibility that pre-order customers could get their Verizon iPhone early, so if you got a pre-order in before they sold out, check the mailbox!

When the iPhone first came out, Steve Jobs — quizzed why Apple had eschwed a stylus — famously quipped that in his opinion, “If you see a stylus, they blew it.”

It’s a great quote, but in reality, it’s always been a little too dismissive of the benefits of styluses. In truth, there’s a lot of uses for a stylus on a touchscreen — for example, in creating digital art. Styluses are also of great people to people trying to use touchscreen devices who can’t keep their hand steady: my mother, for example, has a hard time typing on her iPod Touch without one because she has had tremors since a stroke a few years back.

It’s nice to see, then, that Apple is softening a little bit on their position against styluses… at least when it comes to filing patents.

Disappointed that the Verizon iPhone doesn’t make use of the network’s nascent 4G network? Well, your iPhone might not be able to suck in LTE, but your Mac now can, thanks to Verizon making time in an already busy week to release the latest version of their Verizon Access Manager for Mac software.

Why is this important? Well, thanks to the updated software, if you have Verizon’s Pantech UML290 4G LTE modem and are running Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, you’re now ready to skate along the cutting edge of mobile broadband.

Unfortunately, all the news is not good: LTE will only work on your Mac if you have that one Verizon 4G modem. The other one — the LG VL600 — still doesn’t support Mac, although it is expected to do so later in February.

The ripple effect of Apple’s decision to force e-reading apps like Sony Reader and Amazon’s Kindle to at least offer the option of purchasing content as an in-app purchase is already being felt in the publishing world, with several publishers across Europe already planning a summit in London to discuss the threat.

Describing themselves as feeling “betrayed”, the head of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (a body which represents almost 5,000 members in 80 countries worldwide) are planning to meet with the European Online Publishers Association to “compare notes” on Apple’s new rules.

Why are they so upset? Simple: they have already set up their magazine and newsreader apps to go through their websites, because Apple was refusing to offer an iTunes in-app subscription service. Now, Apple’s introducing such a service… while simultaneously threatening to kick out anyone who doesn’t use it.

When we talk about the massive anticipation for the Verizon iPhone, what we’re always considering is the regular customers, whether the guy from AT&T who has been waiting years to switch away from the mushy, dropped call maker, or the Verizon customer who has had to pretend an Android phone is just as good as an iPhone for years now.

We never talk about the Verizon employees though… a shame, since they probably want an iPhone more than anyone, if only to stop people asking them constantly when Verizon will have the iPhone and treating them like second-class citizens.

Unfortunately, if you’re a Verizon employee, you’ll have to wait a little bit longer to get your iPhone, at least if you want to link it to your Verizon-expensed business line. Try to activate an iPhone on your existing number and Verizon will detect it and change it to a personal number.

Is an iPhone worth paying for your calls? Apparently, Verizon thinks it just might be, because while they can’t stop employees from getting one personally, they have distributed a memo pleading with all employees to postpone iPhone purchases for themselves, their friends and their family until the initial rush is over.

We suspect many of you were up in the wee hours of the morn, smearing blood across the F5 key as you rubbed your index finger raw refreshing Apple’s website… but in case you forgot what day it is, since 3am EST, it’s been Verizon iPhone Pre-Ordering Day! Hooray!

Of course, you can’t just be one of the AT&T hoi polloi if you want to pre-order an iPhone from VZW: if you’re not an existing Verizon customer, you have to wait until February 9th with the rest of us suckers.

Care to get with the pre-ordering? You can do so either directly through Apple or through Verizon. Predictably, ordering from Apple is the smoother and more pleasant experience.

Who’s signed up? Let’s all have a congratulatory back-patting session in the comments!

Nielsen have stepped away from their television statistic to crunch the numbers on current smartphone ownership in the United States, and some of those numbers are fascinating indeed.

Perhaps the most interesting revelation is that right now, Android, Blackberry and iPhones are all pretty much in a dead heat when it comes to market share. That makes this a pivotal time for Google, Apple and RIM. We know Apple is well placed this year for some big numbers, thanks to the Verizon iPhone and the forthcoming iPhone 5, but can even those handsets stop Android from increasing its lead on iOS?

Also intriguing: according to Nielsen’s data, Asians are the most likely people to own an iPhone, while African Americans love BlackBerries. Smartphone penetration is also much lower amongst Whites than Hispanics or Asians, and use their phones less too.

Interesting stuff. If you’re intrigued by smartphone demographics, plunge in here for more.

Earlier today, Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller explained the sudden crackdown on e-reader apps that use an out-of-app billing systems (such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader app) in lieu of in-app purchases in order to sell users content.

“We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines,” Miller said. “We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.”

Offending apps have until March 1st to comply or be yanked from the App Store.

It seems, though, from this wording that Amazon and Sony can comply simply by giving users the option of where they want to buy an e-book: directly from them via the web at the lowest price, or through in-app purchases at a higher price to take into account Apple’s 30% cut.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been seen hobnobbing around town with Steve Jobs on more than a few occasions, but now that Steve Jobs is sick and Eric Schmidt is voluntarily leaving his ten year stint as the head of the infamous search giant, journalists are starting to ask if Schmidt might be the successor to Jobs’ crown.

On Schmidt’s part, while being respectful of Steve and conscientious of his illness, he’s also being a little coy.

After months of being an open secret, News Corp’s iPad-only Newspaper, The Daily, is finally here… along with iTunes’ new in-app subscription API that will allow the Daily and other e-publications to finally begin to prosper. We’ve got the full details.

Well, this is a heck of a scoop to wake up to on Wednesday morning: 9to5Mac has got its grubby little hands upon what they claim to be the display of the iPad 2’s LCD, fresh off of the assembly lines of China.

For the adventurous spirit wishing to go back to the 80s and live on the frontier of national cellular service, all the while carrying around a phone roughly the size of a Korean War field radio, here you go: Thumbs Up’s ’80s Phone, a case for your iPhone 4 that is sure to make you look like Gordon Gekko sent hurtling forward in time. Yours for about $20.

The App Store might have just racked up its 10 billionth download, but the vast majority of those apps have only been given the most cursory examination by users: in fact, according to analytics firm Localytics, 26% of all apps are only used once after they are downloaded.

Localytics’ findings aren’t specific to iOS: they studied thousands of apps across the Android, BlackBerry, iOS and Windows Phone 7 platforms. Across the board, though, one-time use was on the rise in 2010, making it more important than ever for app developers to make that first impression count.

Go down to your local Apple Store and you might just see this wonderful display for the new MacBook Air. Channeling Pixar’s Up, the display features a single helium balloon dangling aloft an 11-inch MacBook Air.

All is not as it seems, of course: nearly invisible fishing wire is being employed to create the illusion. The Air’s light, of course, but not so light that it can be lifted by a child’s balloon.

Still, this calls for an experiment: I wonder who out there is brave enough to figure out how many balloons are needed to send an Air into the stratosphere and willing to back up their math by lending their notebook and its iSight camera to the cause?

What’s the opposite of putting a pig in lipstick? Making a leggy supermodel wear a sow mask? I’m just struggling to find the proper analogy here, because some mad man has just released a fairly exhaustive skin for iOS that makes your iPhone look like — horf — a Windows Phone 7 series device.

Hidden inside a sheathe of patents awarded to Apple today is a particularly interesting one that suggests that your future Mac just might be a slab of aluminum that glows.

If you look at the back of your MacBook, it’s pretty easy to piece together Apple’s current process in making the Apple logo glow. They carve a cut-out of the Apple logo in the MacBook lid, close it up with a sheet of opaque white plastic and when your display is on, the light leaking out causes the logo to emit light.

What Apple wants to do is make the logos and LED displays of future Macs glow without carving a hole in the aluminum. They basically want light-emitting logos and indicators to be invisible unless they are emitting light.

Search Google on your desktop browser and as long as it is HTML5 compliant, hovering your mouse over a link will give you a visual preview of that site, giving you all the more context as to whether or not it’s really the site you need.

Up until now, Google’s Instant Preview functionality wasn’t available to iPad and iPhone users, but it looks like the search giant’s on the cusp of changing that: while it hasn’t been rolled out far and wide, Google is currently in the process of testing a rollout of Instant Preview for Mobile Safari.

Once it’s live, the feature will work only if you tap the magnifying glass icon next to each search result. Tapping that icon will open a preview window that shows a snapshot of the page, which can be flicked through iOS style with your finger.

Extraneous, but neat (and, thankfully, optional). Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the feature is live yet, but it should be coming soon, so keep your iPads tuned.

Wondering just how you went through your 2GB allowance of data this month when all you did was do some browsing and email? A new lawsuit filed in California federal court says you’re not the only one.

The lawsuit filed by Patrick Hendricks alleges that AT&T has been systematically overcharging iPhone and iPad owners with capped data plans by falsely reporting the amount of data. According to Hendricks’ lawyers, this so-called “phantom data” can inflate the actual amount of incoming data by as much as three hundred percent.

“AT&T’s billing system for iPhone and iPad data transactions is like a rigged gas pump that charges for a full gallon when it pumps only nine-tenths of a gallon into your car’s tank,” the complaint reads.

Amongst the constabulary of Mac scuttlebuttheads of which I am an earnest member, that the iPad 2 will ship with a built-in SD card slot — all the better to allow people to edit photos and video on the device, if not increase their storage capacity — is held in consensus.

The prediction is based upon the appearance of numerous iPad 2 cases coming out of Asia that not only have appropriate holes for front and rear-facing cameras and a slot for the iPad’ 2s beefier new speaker, but also a slot that seems just the right size to slide in an SD card.

AppleInsider is now throwing some cold water on those of us expecting to read SDs on the iPad 2, though, instead positing that it’s just a slot reflecting the relocation of the iPad 2’s SIM card slot.

Yesterday, Intel announced a massive hardware recall that surely stopped the hearts of a few investors: the Cougar Point chipset used for their cutting-edge Sandy Bridge CPU had a hardware bug that caused the SATA 3GB/s port to degrade over time, potentially harming hard drives and other devices connected to it.

All things considered, it’s not actually a huge issue. Intel expects that over 3 years of use it would see a failure rate of approximately 5 – 15% depending on usage model. Still, at the end of the day, Intel expects to spend a billion dollars recalling and replacing the chipset. Oof.

The good news, of course, is that a Mac owner, this won’t affect your current system a whit: there aren’t any Macs available with Sandy Bridge just yet. Here’s the bad news, though. That imminent imminent Sandy Bridge MacBook Pro refresh? That might get delayed.